Understanding the local effects that lead to vortex pinning is an
important challenge for the development of high temperature
superconductor technologies. We have developed a magnetic force
microscope (MFM) that can image an individual vortex and place a
bound on its pinning strength. By moving the magnetized
cantilever tip closer to the surface, we can enter a regime where
atomic forces dominate over the magnetic signal, allowing for the
correlation of the pinned vortex locations with a map of the
topographic features. We will describe the implementation of this
technique on a superconducting YBCO film.

To cite this abstract, use the following reference: http://meetings.aps.org/link/BAPS.2005.MAR.B12.5